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vity in these critical
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is key and critical to
ation would
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ler and more cost-
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rough the distinct
ation’s COVID-19
uity, second, security
stage of cost
m a CAPEX and an
are raised. However,
sition to look at the
loed decisions on
ts, and be supported
ver before.
s, one of the key
tunities is to look at an
e, or the foundations
ems, rather than
s and vendors.
nologies can be
t there are strong
roperability and
ple other systems
business work.
This not only has an impact from a cost
perspective but also from an internal
resource allocation perspective.
Lots of vendors means lots of people to
manage those systems, in terms of design,
maintenance management, reporting
and transparency.
So, like never before there is an opportunity
for a CIO to either look at what they have
today and to plan where they want to go
tomorrow, or to start from a blank piece of
paper to say ‘well, if this was a Greenfield
site, what do I want my business systems
to look like?’
And from that, then work backwards and
transition new technologies into the vision
of what that business’ underlying operating
system looks like.
What are some of the key
benefits of taking a platform
over product approach?
If we look at what a product is, it’s simply a
point in time – a silo solution.
Now, within any organisation, you will
have multiple points inside a silo solution
so the key issue and challenge here is
interoperability and integration.
Any changes to one of those products, one
of those solutions or one of those systems
can have implications across the business.
This increases the testing that you need to
do. It can restrict the ability of one of the
solutions and it can delay time to value or
time to market of new solutions, which can
have an ultimate impact on the business.
A platform is exactly that. It’s a foundation
to build upon – interoperability integration
is seamless. You have reduced contracts and
you have still ever-increasing technologies
and capabilities to add on to a platform,
rather than implement a new product.
How can CIOs adopt this strategy?
There are predominantly two ways you can
approach this. One is a patchwork approach,
which is to have a look at the systems and
applications and technologies they have
today, map out what they are wanting to
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